Is this too easy?  Is there enough sitting?  I feel some obligation, but I think it’s helpful to deal with certain propaganda about Zen. One in particular is this expression, in Japanese, it’s Kyoge Betsu Den, four Chinese characters, and it could be translated as Kyo is teaching, Ge is outside, Betsu is special, and Den is transmission. Sometimes there is this rumor that’s been taken care of very well about for fourteen or fifteen hundred years, that Zen is a Kyoge Betsu Den; is a special transmission outside the teachings. Kyo, in this case is often understood as the scriptural teachings or even verbal teachings.  An interpretation of this teaching, which is outside this teaching, there is a special transmission outside this teaching about what Zen is, which is that outside doesn’t mean ‘outside’, it means neither outside or inside.  So, it’s a special transmission that’s not outside the teaching or inside the teaching.  The translation is “Teaching outside, special transmission” literally. And it’s often translated as “Special transmission outside the teaching.”  
    Now I’m giving you another transmission because it’s Zen, right?  So, now I’m going to give you a transmission outside this teaching which is ‘outside’ doesn’t mean outside and it doesn’t mean inside either, it means neither.  Shakyamuni Buddha for example, in his actual spiritual life is not in the teachings, but it’s not outside the teachings because he gave teachings.  That’s the kind of spiritual life he had is that he gave teachings.  So, Buddha ancestors do give teachings and they actually talk usually in conventional language of their teachings not ‘in’ the words, but it’s not outside the words because of the kind of people that talk that way.  And I’d say this partly because we’re now in the process of looking at some scriptures, so Zen isn’t outside the scriptures, but it isn’t in the scriptures either.  And in the Jewel-Mirror-Samadhi, or the Precious-Mirror-Samadhi, earlier transmissions says the meaning is not in the words, it responds to the inquiring impulse.  So, inquiring impulses, that’s usually the impulse - what type of meditation?  Yes, vipashyana, or insight meditation.  You hear a teaching, you hear some words and the meaning of the teaching isn’t in the words, but if that insight energy comes forth, the meaning comes forth with the coming of that energy.  So, it’s something that dependently co-arises out of the interaction between the examination of the teaching and the teaching.
    The actual Chinese character says the meaning isn’t in the words, but it comes out with the arrival of energy, the Ki in my name, Zenki. Ki means energy, but also means activity or opportunity.  So, now the translation says it can emerge in the pivotal moment, the pivotal moment brings it forth.  So, when we interact with the teachings, then somehow meaning and the significance of teachings can emerge.  So now we have these scriptures that we are looking at which one translation is called “Buddhist Wisdom” and so it is about how to develop Buddhist wisdom, but it’s also how to do the meditations on the text itself so that wisdom can emerge.  
    So, now we have some opportunity to do some insight activity with a particular teaching about the nature of reality, but I wanted to also just juxtapose this type of insight work with some other type of possible insight works that you might be more familiar with.  There is Buddhist text that is in the Pali Canon and it’s called the Satipatthana Sutta, the scripture of the four foundations of mindfulness.  ‘Sati’ means mindfulness and ‘patthana’ means foundation or pillar or basis or establishment.  So, the number four isn’t actually in the title, but it’s the four Satipatthanas and the first one is body, the next one is feelings, the next one is consciousness and the last one is dharma.  So, in that sutra, for example, under the topic of body, they teach mindfulness of the body.  For example, they say that a monk is standing; the monk knows she’s standing.  If the monk is walking, she knows she’s walking.  It says if the monk is inhaling, the monk knows that she is inhaling.  If the monk’s exhaling, she knows she’s exhaling.  If it’s a long breath, she knows it’s a long breath.  If it’s a short breath, she knows it’s a short breath.  So, she is mindful of her body in that way.  It doesn’t say she tries to make a long breath or short breath or tries to stand up or sit down, it’s just that she’s mindful of what’s going on.
    So this is some instruction about how to be mindful of the body and the body is an object of mindfulness.  Part of mindfulness is to pay attention to things and the other part of mindfulness is to remember to pay attention.  So main meaning of mindfulness is remember and the secondary meaning of mindfulness is insight or paying attention, which means Prajna ultimately.  And then you move on from body to awareness of the mindfulness of feelings.  Feelings are the easiest for most people, the easiest mental phenomena, mental object to become aware of.  Basically it’s positive and negative, neutral feelings which means positive, negative and neutral evaluations.  There are certain special yogic states that the evaluation processes is curtailed dramatically, but during 99.9999% of states of consciousness, there is an evaluation process going on and even in monks, it’s still going on a little tiny bit.  That’s the easiest of the mental factors to be mindful of.  If the monk has a negative evaluation, in other words, a pain or unpleasant feeling, the monk is aware of that and so on.
    Then a little bit more subtle, to be aware of what kind of consciousness you have in general and that means, generally speaking, your consciousnesses, kind of like agitated or calm or distressed or peaceful or general characterizations of this sort of kind of conscious you have and then you move into awareness of dharma which means that you get into teachings about how to look even more carefully at what you’ve been looking at already.  So for example, you come into the teachings about any hindrances you might have to doing the work you’ve already been doing.  And you come into look at the five aggregates of the experiences that you’ve been looking at.  So, you’ve been looking at your body, but now it breaks down the body into ten aspects and the ten aspects are the physical sense feels and sense capacities.  The material is broken down in the eye capacity and colors.  And then mental factors are broken down in great detail and you learn how to see them and be mindful of them and note them; note anger, note faith, note shame, note decorum, note a lack of shame, note a lack of decorum, so you can actually start to see these things and then also, by being able to see these things, you can ascertain whether the composition constitutes a wholesome or unwholesome state of consciousness so you can start evaluating the karmic quality of your consciousness and so on and so forth with this kind of work.  
    Then they go into other kinds of analysis which refine the earlier kind of mindfulness and then they teach the four noble truths in that sutra, which is another way to penetrate the nature of phenomena, and how our involvement with them creates pain and so on and so forth.  Dogen Zenji doesn’t teach meditation on the skandhas very much.  The Zen masters don’t teach meditation on skandhas very much.  You don’t find them teaching you how to do skandha analysis.  Dogen did teach it a little bit, for example at one point he says, “Are you the same or different from your aggregates, from your skandhas?”  He asks that question a few times and that’s actually straight out of the Pali texts - that once you can do the analysis this way, then you can look to see: is yourself the same as the aggregates or different?  And the Buddha’s analysis is that you’ll find that it isn’t the same as the aggregates and it’s not different from the aggregates.  So, you can’t find yourself in the aggregates and you can’t find it outside the aggregates.  But it must be, if it’s an actual phenomenon, it must be one of the skandhas, but if it’s one of the skandhas, it can’t be the self because none of us mean that the self is a skandha.  Most people think the self is what embraces all the skandhas or owns all the skandhas.  And if it’s outside the skandhas, then it’s a non-existent thing.  So, its not non-existent, it actually must be one of the skandhas, but that’s not what you mean by self.  This kind of analysis, for some people, relieves them of the belief that self is independent of phenomena, which actually most people have that belief.  And for some people that have that belief, this type of meditation frees them of that belief, so this is the fruit of that kind of mindfulness practice or that kind of insight practice.
    Another thing that happens when you do this meditation is that as the meditation gets deeper, you start to see the dharma in the things, in the objects that you’re being mindful of.  The dharma means you start to see the marks of condition phenomena, but also you start to see the basic tenants of all Buddhist schools.  You start to see that actually.  Maybe you have heard about it before or not, but whether you’ve heard it or not, you start to actually see what all Buddhists would agree characterize all the things that you are being mindful of.  So, what are those things you see?  You see impermanence, you see non-self, and you see suffering.   And all Buddhist schools agree with that.  The modified say that ‘contaminated or defiled phenomena’ are suffering.  But for the meditator who is learning this process, everything they see is defiled otherwise they wouldn’t be learning this meditation, they would be teaching it.  They would be showing people how to do it because they already learned how to do it so they already have seen so deeply, these monks, that they’ve become disabused of that which contaminates phenomena.  So, for them it wouldn’t be (inaudible) case that everything they see is contaminated by their misconceptions, but most people who are learning this meditation, everything they see is somewhat defiled—in terms of this Sutra is defiled by confusion of what’s happening with the imputational.  That confusion of the other dependent character with the imputational character makes everything that we see painful.  But when the other dependent character is seen as being empty of the imputational, then the phenomena we’re looking at is not painful.
    STUDENT: Can you explain that with respect to people who are kind of jovial, happy people who don’t actually seem to be in pain—in fact, when you ask them, they’re like, “Everything is wonderful.”  That’s they’re general state.
    T.R.: Do they seem that they have seen the lack of imputational and the (inaudible)?
    STUDENT: No, regular conversation and I wouldn’t say that I was testing them through the conversation, but I had an idea.
    T.R.: Well, these jovial, happy people are people who perhaps might not be able to see yet what we’re talking about here.  Mainly, see this thoroughly established nature; they might not be able to see it yet.  So, they might be looking at things and feeling pain while they look at it, they might be, that’s one possibility.  But some people who actually are doing mindfulness work and who are paying attention to things do see that all contaminated phenomena—in other words everything they see because they still haven’t seen the ultimate truth—they might be aware that everything they see is painful and yet, be upbeat about that.  So monks who are doing this meditation and then do it to the point where they start to see it consistently, its more likely that when you see it consistently that you can be upbeat then when you see it once in a while. If you’re meditating on phenomena and you’re going along and you don’t notice that they’re contaminated and you don’t notice that it’s painful to be with contaminated phenomena, if you don’t notice that and then you do, sometimes its kind of like a punch in the gut or a punch in the ear or a punch in the temple or the throat or the heart.  That kind of thing happens.  Have you ever seen that?
    But if you see it regularly like almost in that kind of rhythmical way, like every few milliseconds, you can evolve some stability with it.  You can be quite stable and patient with the pain of being deluded.  In other words, a deluded person can be stable and calm as the pain, which is the consequence of their delusion, keeps poking them.  They can be calm and upbeat.  So, it’s possible that some jovial people are in touch with seeing that all defiled phenomena are painful.  They can see that and if they see it regularly, they are more likely to be stable and even happy-go-lucky about this and also feel joyful that they’re doing this meditation.  The other possibility is that the person is on drugs.  (Laughter) Or somebody has just given them a lot of money, constantly and this kind of interaction distracts them from mindfulness of what’s going on.  They’re not being mindful, they’re not paying attention.  If you check with them in their jovialness, you might say, “How do you feel?”  And they might say, “Everything’s wonderful.”  And you might say, “Which foot is carrying the most weight.” …and they might say (thump) (laughter).  Suddenly their irritated with you, they were just happily walking along and now you ask them, “Which foot are you standing on?”
(Laughter) Or you might say, “You’re jovial and you make the rest of us feel miserable.”  And they go, “Oh, how wonderful.”  And then you say something else, and they say, “Oh, how wonderful.”  And then you say something else and pretty soon, maybe they don’t seem to be so jovial anymore.  But some jovial people are definitely successful at distracting themselves from what’s happening.  Some jovial people are paying attention to what’s happening at a certain level of enlightenment and are used to it and are happy to be doing the practice and they’re happy even though they are not completely free yet, which comes with seeing the ultimate.  They are doing well in bondage, because they are practicing and they’ve gotten used to seeing the pain.  And ‘gotten used to it’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother them anymore, it means that it’s not shocking.  It doesn’t bring them down, they are not depressed.  Not all people who are aware of suffering are depressed.  That is what I would say about such people.  There are three basic varieties; enlightened, the one who is in training to be enlightened, and the one who is successfully distracting themselves from suffering.  
    Another kind of mindfulness practice or inside practice is the one you might do in response to the heart Sutra.  The Heart Sutra says that Avalokiteshvara when practicing deeply, the Prajna Paramita, and by the way, writing Avalokiteshvara’s name in the Chinese translation, when it is chanted in Chinese, we go Kanjizai, Kanjizai Bosatsu.  Kanjizai is one Chinese translation of that Bodhisattva’s name and Kan is the Chinese character for insight.  It means insight or contemplation, so his name could be translated as Kan: contemplation or insight, Ji: self, Zai: existence.  So the name of this bodhisattva of compassion has this name which is contemplation or insight into the existence of the self, or the way the self exists.  That a compassionate being is focusing on how the self exists.  That meditation is at the core of the compassionate being’s practice, according to this particular translation.  
    Then it says, when deeply practicing, Prajna Paramita saw that the five aggregates are empty of own being.  So, this bodhisattva of compassion is meditating on the way the self exists, doing insight work on the way the self exists, that’s his name.  And then in the process of doing insight work on the way the self exists, he sees skandhas because that’s one way the self might appear is some composition of these aggregates, these skandhas.  And he sees that the skandhas themselves have no own being.  In other words, he sees the categories of existence where in the self appears, that those categories actually don’t hold up, that they’re not really there.  And that relieves all suffering.  Universally, that vision is the vision that liberates beings.  So, this is a kind of insight work in a Mahayana scripture that we chant in Zen frequently, in Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, English, Russian, Mongolian and so on.  But that’s insight text, that’s a wisdom text, right?  This text we’re studying now, again, is a little bit different type of insight instruction where we’re not just talking about just simply that all dharmas are marked by a lack of own being, but we’re talking about three types of lack of own being.  So this sutra is elucidating, trying to help us understand more what the emptiness in the previous insight text was talking about.  So, this text in some ways is harder than the previous one, even though it’s really completely in accord with the previous one, it’s making some discriminations which help us understand what the lack of own being that the skandhas are subject to, means.      STUDENT: It was written after the heart sutra?
    T.R.: I don’t know if it’s written after the heart sutra, but the heart sutra is not an early Prajna Paramita text.  So, the Prajna Paramita text seemed to appear in the world about a 100 years before the beginning of the common era and then they keep getting written for five or six hundred years and the heart sutra is in the later part of that.  So, while these Prajna Paramita texts are being studied and recreated in various ways, in that process probably around third, fourth century, this sutra appears which is trying to unravel the thought in the Buddha’s mind when the Buddha taught the Prajna Paramita.  Prajna Paramita is still held up in ultimate teaching, this teaching is trying to help us understand what was going on in Buddha’s mind when he taught the Prajna Paramita and what was going in Buddha’s mind when he taught the earlier teachings before the Prajna Paramita which are the teachings that give the instruction of mindfulness in the early scriptures, that make sense?  So the heart sutra might have been written a little after this because since there are chants in so many places, a lot of people feel like it is really like a wonderful culmination of the Prajna Paramita teaching because it is put in such a nice form.  The other ones are wonderful too, but they’re so much longer that most people don’t have time to read them every morning.  Whereas this one text in some sense, gets a lot of what those sutras are trying to do.
    So this is again, to give you a footing in these kinds of teachings.  Any questions about how do you work with all this?  Anything you want to bring up before we go forward?
    STUDENT: You (laughter).
      T.R.: One thing that just popped in my mind is that, if you’re doing insight work, for example, part of insight work is to be in a class like this with somebody or a whole bunch of people playing the role of the teacher or teachers; could have a bunch of teachers teaching this text, that’d be fine.  In fact, we have people who have different levels of experience with this teaching and so, in some of your study groups, you may find that some people have been working with this text for while, so you get a sense they can share with you some of their background.  A number of people here have memorized significant sections of the sutras.  Some of them have memorized some of the most excellent sections.  Some of them have memorized some of the more boring sections (Laughter).  Anyway, there are various levels going on here, so part of developing insight is to be in a class situation with texts and chairs and tables and pens and notepads and talk and that’s the first part of insight work; through hearing and seeing and studying and the learning phase and so on.  This happens pretty much on a literal level.  The insight depends on words and it’s literal.  You do not yet understand at this first level, however, the intention of the teaching.  And even during this level insight work, generally speaking, if you’re extremely upset and you were going to a class to do insight work, you might calm down, just see and be in a room of calm people.  You might calm down just to be in their presence.
    But if you were feeling pretty calm and you start hearing insight work, you might feel a little bit more excited or even agitated.  If you’re very calm, especially at the first levels of insight and you start to do the insight work, you start—generally speaking—to feel more agitated and excited.  Does that make sense?  And a lot of people are agitated and excited in a negative way.  They get very excited when they think they don’t understand.  Some people are excited in a positive way, they feel good because they think they do understand and they’re like zipping around, so watch out for those guys.  (Laughter)  They’re positive, they’re jolly, but they’re actually quite agitated.  They’re not on drugs, but they’re jolly, almost like they have roller skates on.  So, if you get really excited about how wonderful it is that you understand this teaching, like you’re really excited that you understand this teaching or if your really excited and depressed and discouraged that you don’t understand the teaching, then it’s probably a good idea to, what?
    STUDENT: Calm down.
    T.R.: Yes, calm down.  Put aside insight work for a while, put aside using discursive thought to penetrate these teachings and turn toward giving up discursive thought for a while, with confidence that that is part of the practice and it is part of the course of developing wisdom, so you’re not wasting your time and you need to calm down a little bit.  So, if you feel too upset and some people are already telling me that sometimes they’re already starting to feel a little upset, well just go back to the calming work again.  And if you’re upset about your calming work not working, then give up your thoughts that it’s not working.  Your evaluations and your calming work is more discursive thought that you just give up and let go too.
    STUDENT: Earlier when you were speaking of the Dalai Lama, how he seems to be jolly…
    T.R.: Yes, Dali Lama seems to be jolly and he also cries a lot.  But between the crying, he’s jolly.  But he may be sometimes crying for us, even while he’s feeling free, he may still be crying for us.  He may be jolly even though he does see tremendous suffering because his practice is strong enough at this point.
    STUDENT: What if giving up of this person’s thought makes me joyful and jolly, when I feel joyful when I stop doing it as cursive thought, is that a reason to start worrying?
    T.R.: Some people want to know if they’ve actually become calm and actually it’s not too difficult to tell if you’ve become calm.  It’s not extremely subtle, because you do feel joyful, but you also feel calm.  You have a lot of energy, but it’s not like shaking the ship.  It’s more like, round, firm and fully packed.  In Zen sometimes, they talk about concentrating on Hara and feel like there’s a new bright rubber ball in your tummy.  Not a cannon ball, that’s more like insight work (Laughter).  A bright, firm, but soft ball in your stomach, a round bright, flexible—not soggy—but flexible and soft and pliant, workable, awake mind comes and you are happy with it.  You do feel joy, you feel the joy in your head and you feel the joy in your body and you don’t have to worry about that.  And even if you don’t have that, you don’t have to worry either.  As a matter of fact, calming work is for people who are worried about not being calm.  If you’re not worried about being calm, that goes quite nicely with developing calm.  We do not recommend worry unless somebody is not worried and refuses to worry.  Then they don’t have that pliancy.  A person who is in shamatha or who is really tranquil, you go up to them and say, “Would you worry for a while?”  And they say, “Fine, how?”  Or I was sitting next to a friend of mine and somebody said to her, “What kind of work do you do?”  And she said, “What do you need?” (Laughter) but in her case that was because she was on drugs (laughter).
    Some drugs can make you feel like your tranquil, right?  You feel like, “Okay, take my arms and legs.”  But after you feel like it’s okay, then you might have some suggestions, some alternative because you’re willing to give up your unworried mind and receive a worried one, when you’re flexible.  But then after you’ve been willing to receive a worried mind, the worried mind doesn’t necessarily work on you because you were so happy to receive it and now you’re happy to let it go.  So, the shamatha mind is a mind in which, because of this training, you have temporarily become free of affliction.  So, you don’t have to worry that you’re free of worry and you don’t have be afflicted and feel extreme pain about being free of extreme pain.  You don’t have to worry about it, its okay.  But this state is not permanent, that’s why we need wisdom.
    Wisdom makes it so that we are permanently free of the afflictions.  And then if you feel calm, you can just do calming practices during a practice period, but if you come to this class, you’ll get some exposure to insight work and then something will happen on the inside level, but maybe not much.  Maybe you’ll mostly be doing calm practice, but some inside teachings and some insight practice will touch you because when you’re calm, you’re open.  Another characteristic of being calm is you’re open.  You don’t sit there and say, “I’m not going to listen to this bird.”  Or you might say that, but you just let go of that thought and also, you usually don’t say, “I am going to listen to this bird,” but if you did say it, you just hear yourself say, “I’m gonna listen to this bird.”  There might actually not be a bird, but you’re just talking to yourself and you’re relaxed with your own thoughts.
    STUDENT: I’m wondering if I understand the insight work in the Zen-do because I think about, well maybe I’d be going over something I had memorized or trying to focus on aggregates or something that seems a lot different than not getting in your thought.  I know I’d have to keep grabbing the teaching in order to concentrate on them, to accept the idea in that particular type of meditation?
    T.R.: If you’re doing shamatha work, and if for example, the worries came into your head, “How are Bodhisattva’s why’s with respect to the character of phenomena,” if that sutra or thought arose in your mind while you were doing shamatha work, just relax with it.  Does that make sense?  And if you actually do relax with it, you’re calmed down and you’ve become happy and all that good stuff, okay?  That’s a possibility for human beings.  So, if you were sitting, you might hear the sound of rain and you also might hear in your own mind, which is also where the rain sound is, you might hear some scripture that might pop up in your head, so, then if you’re practicing shamatha, just let go of it.  Now, if you’re practicing insight, then the question is, would you intentionally bring up…when some teaching comes up, some (inaudible 0.6 minutes) to hold it, sometimes it’s not.   …every night that instruction.  So, it’s kind of like, just like some people have songs that are running through their heads or vendettas that are running through their heads or planning that’s running through their head, some people have sutras running through their heads because they listen to the sutra channel more than they listen to the, whatever, public radio.  So, because you hear a lot of sutras, they pop up in your head.  In fact, some people frequently think of the works ‘think of not thinking’.  Without making any big effort, they just do that and then when they think it, sometimes they go, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.”  And then when you feel that way, it makes more of an impact and then you actually may take hold of it and try to penetrate it.   So then, you might actually like, “What does that mean?” You might actually start to penetrate ‘think, not thinking’.  You might have available to you, “Well, how do you do that?  How do you penetrate the meaning of ‘think, not thinking’?  Well, non-thinking, that’s how.”  So you might penetrate ‘non-thinking’, “What is non-thinking?”  Well, I’m telling you now what it is.  What did I tell you it was?  Do you remember?
    STUDENT: To reject your attachment to what comes up.
    T.R.: That is a good mode in which to study non-thinking, but what is actual non-thinking?
    STUDENT: Give up discursive thought.
    T.R.: Discursive thought at this point, to some extent is given up, but what non-thinking actually is, is actually what’s happening.  Is it calming and insight united?  It could be, but also, calming-insight might not be united and if they’re not united, the way they’re actually not united, the way a human being’s happening when they’re calm and insight isn’t united, that’s what’s happening.  And when what’s happening is not confused with our ideas about what’s happening, that’s non-thinking.  So that instruction by the Zen master of what to do when you’re sitting is insight work and he’s telling us some words, he’s writing words out which he heard an ancient Zen master said, so he’s bringing up the…(LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE FOR 2.4MINUTES)…think of emptiness.  (LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)…penetrate it and study it, you could intentionally bring it up.  (LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)…could examine and try to see…(LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)…zendo when you go beyond thinking.  What is that?  And then try to catch yourself and talk to yourself about that.  Have a conversation with yourself about what you are doing about that teaching.  Just like you could also have…(LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)…of the sutra.  That would actually be insight work, but if you get too upset in the Zen-do doing that, drop it.  Calm down.  When you feel somewhat calm again, you might go back to it again.  So, this is like an ongoing process of trying to understand what the most skillful way of examining a teaching.
    STUDENT: What was said about giving up discursive thought…(LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)…by thinking discursive thought being the way I articulate to myself my ideas about phenomena and imagine giving up discursive thought, that at first, that’s synonymous with giving up my ideas about phenomena.  But then I realized after being (inaudible), I’m just giving up articulating those ideas (inaudible) on top of…(LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE)...
    T.R.: …just now, one interpretation I would make of what you said now, you just described the limitations of calming practice.  What you said is the articulation of your basic ideas—and I would change that to basic misconceptions or basic confusion—the articulation is attenuated.  And when the articulation is attenuated, you do calm down.  The more we talk and think, especially discursively, if more we run around in our head based on our misconceptions, the more upset we get, the more affliction we experience.  When we attenuate, when we give up the conceptual elaboration of our misconceptions, we calm down through that giving up of conceptualization, of conceptuality.  But the basic concepts are still sitting there, waiting to come out and play again.  When they get enacted or articulated or elaborated, they again cause affliction.  So the calming work is not enough.  We need instruction which will guide us back to refute, overthrow, and be convinced that this is a misconception.  First of all, when we understand that it’s a misconception, we change and some affliction starts to wane down.  When we’re convinced, we’re changed even more and more affliction starts to wane, but the fullest realization of being convinced that this is a misconception will happen when we take that and join it then with the state where we actually are in deep calm.  Does that make sense now?
    STUDENT: (Inaudible) is not like anything that anything can kind of implication out of and anything that the (inaudible) and so, it seems to me like the inside practice is like sitting on the bottom of the huge ocean and trying to (inaudible) on the bottom of the ocean.  I was wondering how to break down in quotation or in (inaudible) in the practice of (inaudible) so we can practice?
    T.R.: You’re wondering how to break down the imputation and the other dependant in a practical way?  That’s what we’re gonna try to learn.  You haven’t learned it yet, have you?  No (Laughter).  But you have specified you’d like to learn that, so now that’s what we’re going to try to learn, is how to do that.  
    STUDENT: The process of Shamatha, is that where you’re working with Karma and does that mean, obviously unless you worked with your karma, you’re not going to be calm and not only is it picking up discursive thought, but working also with one’s karma is not going to bring you calm.
    T.R.: What’s the relationship between working with your karma and giving up discursive thought?  Well, one relationship between working with karma or giving up discursive thought is that you start to become aware of your karma.  The fundamental definition of karma is translated as action, its definition is intention.  Early definition of karma in Sanskrit is chetana, which is your intention of, your moment of, “Right now, what’s your intention?”  So, looking at your intention definitely is related to achieving calm.  Being aware of your intention is closely related to achieving calm.  So, it’s good to notice if you have the intention to calm.  If you do not have the intention to calm and you don’t look to see that you don’t and then you try to practice calm, of course you’re going to have a problem.  Did that make sense?  That’s what some people do, they go into the Zen-do and they have this idea floating in their head that they’re going to practice calm, but they didn’t check to see if they wanted to.  So, they sit down and then they don’t and they think, “God, this is terrible.  I thought I was coming here to practice calm, but I’m like all over the place.”  But they didn’t actually look to see if they wanted and sometime I might ask somebody at the door, “What do you want to do?”  (Laughter)  And then sometimes they say, “I want to practice calm.”  I say, “You want to practice calm?”  They say, “Yeah,” and then they go in and sit down and then sometimes when they sit down, they check again and they say, “Whoops, I don’t want to anymore.”
    But if you’re aware that you don’t want to practice calm in the Zen-do, that awareness that you don’t want to practice calm promotes the realization of calm because you know you don’t want to and then you understand that you probably won’t because you don’t want to.  So, in order to practice calm, you kind of have to check to see whether you want to practice that or not and your intention to practice it is actually the definition of your karma.  So, good question and now let me give some examples of some people in this room that I know have confessed to me that they kind of want to practice calm, but they don’t think it’s okay if they do.  They just don’t think it would be alright.  They don’t trust it will be okay to relax completely in this moment.  They actually don’t think its okay, can you believe that?  Maybe they’re anxious and maybe they think it’s not okay to relax.  If they relax, then they would think that’s too dangerous, “I can’t do that.  I’ll wet my pants or I’ll drool or I’ll go to sleep or a mosquito will bite me and I won’t hit it or whatever, you know?”
    So, I say to people like that, “Well, what do you need in order to feel it would be alright to relax?”  They say, well maybe all the things a person mentions are realistic and we can actually supply those resources and they can go ahead and relax or they find out, nope you can’t have that.  That requirement for relaxation you can’t have, but at least you’ve said it.  So now you know because that hasn’t been satisfied, you can’t relax.  Is that too abstract?  For example, Nancy has a little girl and if her little girl does not want her to practice shamatha, maybe she can’t.  Maybe if Olivia comes up to you and says, “Mommy, do not relax.”  (Laughter)  Nancy may say, “Okay, I’m not relaxed.  I’m not going to let go of discursive thought.”  “Mommy, keep doing discursive thought because if you stop, I’m going to totally freak out.”  And Nancy may say, “Okay, I’ll choose her not being freaked out over me letting go of discursive thought.”  You might do that.  But it’s possible that if we should go to the zendo, she still might think that she can’t relax because Olivia told her yesterday not to do it.  So, she could say, “Maybe that would be alright.  Maybe she wouldn’t mind if I did it now, because she’s with Daniel and she’s keeping him not calm.”  (Laughter)
    But some people tell people who are coming to this practice period that they do not want them to relax visa vie them.  Some spouses are saying don’t relax when you get there, keep thinking of me, keep worrying about me, you know?  So, you have to learn how do you keep loving your spouse whose not here and find a way to do that and also let go of the discursive thought related to your spouse and be calm, letting go of the discursive thoughts about your spouse.  Is there some way to do that?  And if you can’t do that, you examine your mind, you look at your mind and this is part of mindfulness work that will actually help.  You have to use discursive thought to give up discursive thought.  You have to use discursive thought to examine your mind and see if the structure of your mind is shaped in such a way that it’s intention is to give up discursive thought and a lot of people, if they look in their mind, they will see that the structure of the mind is not, the shape of the mind is not oriented towards giving up discursive thought.  So, then you would also be able to conclude that you would not be able to do it at that moment because you’re mind is not in that mode.  So you’re not going to be able, it’s not going to happen. Studying the shape of your mind, whether you’re really intending to practice shamatha is studying karma.  So studying your karma would conducive to setting up the conditions for practicing stabilization of your consciousness.  Does that make sense?
    STUDENT: So, you’re studying your intention in the moment, then that’s what you should be doing your history of karma at the Zen-do?
    T.R.: Your history’s included in the present moment.  Some people have a history of billions of hours of shamatha in the background.  Some people have a history of ten minutes of shamatha in the background.  But it may be the one that has zillions of hours of shamatha doesn’t want to practice shamatha now.  They want to do vipashyana.  They want to think of not-thinking, they want to think non-thinking.  That’s the practice they want to do because they don’t want to do shamatha practice.  And that’s their intention and they checked their karma before they sit down to see what their intention is for the moment.  Some people want to sit there for the welfare of all beings and practice calm.  Some people want to sit there for the welfare of all beings and practice non-thinking.  That’s called checking out your intention.  That is a very helpful aspect of meditation, is to check out which meditation you want to do and a lot of people go and sit down and they sit the whole period without ever having checked to see what they were intending to do.  So, in that sense, they seem to feel like they missed that period.
    STUDENT: When Joan talks about taking the backward step, is that another way of saying this?
    T.R.: This instruction “Take the Backwards Step” goes also with “Turn the Light Around and Shine it Back” that sometimes has been translated that goes with the Backwards Step.  That teaching could an insight instruction or a shamatha instruction.  It’s a shamatha instruction when you turn the light around and shine it back on the mind that knows objects.  So another way to talk about shamatha practice is you focus, you learn through discursive thought, you learn how to focus on the non-discursive part of your mind and the non-discursive mind is always present.  In other words, discursive thought is not always present.  It’s commonly present, but not always.  But whenever there is consciousness of an object, the way that that object is know is always the same.  In shamatha practice, you look back at the way the mind relates to everything the same.  So, then you’re not moving from object to another object, you’re looking at the same object the whole time which is the mind which knows the different objects.  So, turning the light around could be turning around to look at the way the mind always appears.  It always appears as cognition.  So, you’re turning around looking at the basic mind like quality of the mind.  That’s one way of taking a backward step.  Another way to take a backward step is to turn back and look at your thinking, look at your discursive thought and see if your discursive thought is engaging some teaching about the nature of phenomena.  And how is your mind confusing or not confusing what’s happening with your imputations?  So, it could be either one.  Zen Teacher Huangbo taught something like give up conceptuality, sometimes he says give up conceptual thought, give up conceptualization, give up conceptuality.  And again, that instruction could be instruction in calming, if you take it as meaning give up discursive thought.  Just let go of discursive thought, that could be a calming instruction or you could understand it as give up the confusion of the imputation of certain status to phenomena, give up the confusing of the imputation with the other dependant.  Because the imputation is the process of conceptualization, of a certain type of conceptualization in terms of essences, entities and attributes.
    So, that type of conceptualization, give that up means learn to find how it’s absent in what’s happening.  That could be another meaning when he makes the simple instruction of give up conceptuality.  He says that many times to different monks and for this monk it’s a shamatha practice and this monk it’s a vipashyana practice.  And if the monk for whom he means it as a shamatha practice hears the practice the way he meant it and practices according to the way he meant it, then he would see that the monk understood the way he meant it and was practicing in accordance with what he meant and then he would say (clap).  But if the monk for whom he meant that instruction as a calming practice took it as an insight practice, that monk might just get upset.  He might say, “I didn’t mean it that way for you.  For you, I meant it this way.”  And similarly, the monk for whom he felt there was enough calm already or for whom he had previously given the instruction as a calming practice became calm, he might give it again and the monk might continue to do it the way he had been doing it and he said, “Now I want you to do it like this.  Instead of just giving up discursive thought, I want you to notice how your discursive thought has nothing to do with the way things are actually happening.  Can you find that?”
    So, that’s Huangbo.  Bodhidharma taught his student, Huike, he said, “Outside have no involvements, inside, no coughing and sighing in the mind.”   So, those words could be taken as a calming practice.  So, in other words, whether it’s colors and sounds and so on which seem to be outside or opinions and feelings which seem to be inside, he’s saying basically don’t get involved in that stuff.  So, what he’s doing you could hear as a calming practice that he’s suggesting to Huike to turn the light around and look at non-involvement.  Look at the mind which is not involved with objects.
    Another translation is don’t activate the mind around objects, internal or external.  That instruction of don’t activate the mind around objects, in other words, when somebody’s face appears to you or a teaching appears to you or you hear somebody say something about you, that’s an object that which you’re aware of, don’t get your mind active around it.  Don’t elaborate on it.  Just hear that and don’t get excited around it.  Another translation is just don’t get involved with any objects.  You can take that as a calming practice and that would mean that whatever you hear when you’re sitting or whatever you feel in your body or whatever you see with your eyes, those objects you don’t get involved with.  Just relate to them face to face, heart to heart, body to body, no involvement.  In other words, you’re turning your intention towards the mind which doesn’t get involved.  Each moment, there’s a mind which doesn’t get involved with what’s happening.  Turning your mind in that direction will calm.  But the other way to understand it is, when an object comes, what would it be like to not get involved in the level of confusing imputations with what’s happening with it?  The object’s happening, the object’s arising and ceasing, it’s an impermanent thing, what’s it like to relate to these impermanent things about projecting your ideas on them, superimposing your ideas without getting involved that way.  When you look at that, then you’re doing insight work.  You’re not looking at the mind which keeps everything the same, you’re looking at how the mind makes things different; how the mind makes things different rather the way the universe makes things different.  The universe makes things different too, like makes different people, but we have our own internal superimposition of what the universe is doing.  So, these instructions, turning light around, shining it back, backwards step, giving up conceptuality, give up involvements, those could all be taken as either calm or insight.  
    STUDENT: Going back to the imputational character of phenomena, I want to make sure I’m not missing any of this.    
    T.R.: What is the imputational character?  It is that which is imputed as a name or symbol in terms of own being or attributes of phenomena in order to subsequently designate any convention whatsoever.  That’s what the sutra says.
    STUDENT: So I see these special things in front of me and I call it a tear because that’s the conventional designation and it’s something I’ve imputed to it, which isn’t necessarily (inaudible).
    T.R.: Okay, now we’re starting to study what this imputational character might be, so now we’re starting to do insight work.  Let’s have “O.D.” is other dependent character and “I”, the imputational and maybe throw in establish as T.E., or maybe E.T. would be better (Laughter).  She says she looks and sees for example, what she calls a chair, alright?  Now what she was saying maybe is that the chair is not really there, something like that?  Worth not something essential to it, the word chair? So the word chair is not essential to this, right?  So, we can all agree to that.  
    STUDENT: The naming of it is part of the interdependent-ness of it.
    T.R.: Once we call it a chair, it is.  But you wouldn’t have to call this a chair.  
    STUDENT: You could call it a seat.
    T.R.: You wouldn’t have to call it a seat either.
    STUDENT: You could describe it.
    T.R.: You could describe it, but if you describe it with words and you’re using words, the imputational is not the words.  But if you want to talk about the fact that the words, the word chair is not necessary for this phenomena.  It is necessary for the phenomena of the word chair, but the imputational is not the word ‘chair’.  The imputational is that which makes it possible to use the word chair.  Because the imputational you see, is what we have in order to subsequently designate any convention whatsoever.  When you say “chair” on the occasion of this, the imputational is what made it possible for you to say “chair” and get the little kick you get out of it when you say that.  The imputational is not the word “chair”.  The imputational functions as a name or a chair in terms of an own being or attributes of phenomena.
    So, the imputation is not just the basis upon which we are able to put the word ‘chair’ onto this object, it’s not just that.  The imputational that we’re talking about in the sutra here is imputation in terms of essences and attributes. If there were some basis for us to make a conventional designation in terms of words and symbols and we didn’t make that imputation in terms of essences and attributes, that type of imputation, that type of imagination is not the type of imagination, the absence of which is the thoroughly established character.  The thoroughly established character is the absence of imputation, not just in terms of names and symbols so that we can make conventional designations, that’s part of it.  It’s also the imputation of essences and attributes and if you look in your minds, you can perhaps see how when you put the word ‘chair’ onto this, that part of the reason why that has a meaning for you is that an essence has been projected onto this and part of the reason why you can do the essence is because this thing has satisfied certain attributes which you think are there.  And therefore, it’s a meaningful process to you to commit the conventional designation ‘chair’ to this phenomena.
    But if you could imagine taking away the attribution of essences and attributes, you might feel very differently about calling this a chair.  And the absence of this type of imputation, which is in terms of the essences and attributes, the absence of that is ultimate truth for human beings.  And this is what we are trying to learn how to see, but we have to examine the process of the imputation in order to see the absence of it.
    STUDENT: Everything minus “I” is thoroughly established?
    T.R.: No, that’s close though.  But that’s also what the sutra points out.  It’s not that everything minus “I” is a thoroughly established; everything minus the “I” is the other dependant.  All impermanent phenomena—not everything—minus the “I” is a thoroughly established because some things are the imputational and imputation happens.
    STUDENT: But by “I”, I meant imputation.
    T.R.: Right, but you say, “Everything minus “I”, but that wouldn’t work because you just left out the imputational events.  They’re part of everything.  But the other dependent which is most impermanent phenomena, most of what’s happening is impermanent phenomena.  All things arise dependant on a condition.  They’re impermanent and that’s most of what we’re dealing with.  That’s really what’s happening.  The imputational’s not really happening.  Imputation is happening, but imputation is another cognitive act, it’s another impermanent phenomena.  But the imputation doesn’t really happen.  The imputation of essences and attributes doesn’t actually happen.  It’s this perfect, complete, unsurpassed fantasy (laughter).  
    But that imputation is part of everything.  We do have that very important thing, phenomena called imputation.  But imputing is another other dependent phenomena.  You take away the imputation from what’s happening, then you have what’s happening, but you do not yet have the thoroughly established.  The thoroughly established, the ultimate truth is not what is happening.  The ultimate truth is the fact that what’s happening is pure of the imputational.  In other words, the lack of the imputational in what’s happening, it’s the lack of involvement with objects.  That’s the ultimate truth.  So, that destruction of Bodhidarma was really another meditation on think of not thinking or meditate on ultimate truth.
    STUDENT: So it seems to me that one pre-requisite to be able to speak of the chair would be to actually somehow claim that is different from everything else?
    T.R.: Yes, right.  And just that idea is okay, but to mix that idea up with the chair is delusion.  
    STUDENT: So is that idea something that’s coming closer to understanding imputation and simply saying a chair is an imputation?
    T.R.: No, to say the chair is imputation is not correct.  
    STUDENT: What I am trying to suppress is there is something before that.
    T.R.: Something before what?
    STUDENT: Before calling a chair.
    T.R.: Yes, that’s right.  The definition of imputational is saying that in order to call something a chair in a meaningful way depends on the imputational character.  Otherwise, just to say “glob” doesn’t necessarily mean anything yet, right?  Somehow, when we say ‘chair’ that’s based on something and the thing it’s based on (LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE) and have languages based on (LOUD INTERMITTENT BUZZING NOISE) and it’s based on imputing essences and attributes.  Based on that, we can talk and have language meaningfully.  
    STUDENT: The imputation is also ultimate reality, ultimate truth and it’s a convenient symbol that allows us to process conventional truth rapidly.  When the soku says, “Ray, go get another kettle,” the word ‘kettle’ assumes lots of attributes and essences which I quickly run through in my thinking and I know what to get when I run back to the kitchen.  And because it’s useful, it has utility, it is also part of ultimate reality as everything is.  
    T.R.: Well, in this sutra, ultimate truth is not the same as everything.  Ultimate truth is not the same as the entire universe.  Ultimate truth is an object which we can know, which when we know it, our body and mind, our life becomes purified.  But not everything that we look at will purify us.  Now, everything in the universe, all things including soku, pots and so on, all these things have an ultimate character and when we see the ultimate character of any ‘thing’ in the universe and when we see that, we become liberated, we become purified of affliction.  But the ultimate truth is not the same as everything, but everything has this ultimate truth.
    STUDENT: It seems like in the imputational is where we construct meaning.
    T.R.: Yes, right.  That’s one of the nice things about the imputational, it helps us get a certain kind of meaning.  But after we got the meaning, then the yogic process is to give up the way we got the meaning and see that the way we got the meaning is not actually reaching what’s happening.  I offer you that Woody Allen story of the guy that goes to a psychiatrist and says, “My brother thinks he’s a chicken.”  And the psychiatrist says, “Well, why didn’t you tell him he’s not?”  And he said, “I need the eggs.”  So, you need the chicken for a while to get the truth, but after you get the truth, this course is then to give up the chicken.  But you needed the chicken to get the truth in the first place, but then after you get the truth, then try to like, peel the chicken away from the egg or actually from the meaning of being an egg eater.
    STUDENT: Could you go a little bit more into essences and attributes?
    T.R.: This sutra is addressing often the first teaching of Buddhism and usually people—something’s happening—and they think “I’m here.”  And then they think that there is some essence in saying that and then you have a teaching of the aggregates which teach you that really there’s feeling here and there’s body here and there’s opinions here and there’s emotions here, but really if you look at all the things you can actually see, you never find this thing you meant by “I”.  This sutra then looks at, for example, the skandhas and take a form, like color and this sutra says when you say, “That’s a form,” that you have actually attributed an essence.  Then when you talk about deduction or the ceasing of the form, that’s an attribute of form or a feeling, this is a negative sensation, but when you say that, that’s the situation in which we attribute essences, that we actually think there’s an essence there in that color.  The way we think that there’s an essence in our experience of being a person before we analyzed our experience into actually what we’re actually feeling and actually experiencing.  So, the examples in the sutra which you don’t see this in the next chapter of attributing essences, this is a form…

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